The Dying Light

Title: The Dying Light
Author: Ann Cleeves
Published: September 29, 2026 by Minotaur Books
Format: Kindle, 384 Pages
Genre: Police Procedural
Series: Two Rivers #4

Blurb: A scorching heatwave marks the start of the summer in Devon. Detective Matthew Venn is called in to investigate a puzzling death, when the body of a young woman, Lottie, is found in the swimming pool of a luxurious holiday home. The girl’s best friend, Hannah, whose family owns the house, is missing. The girls had arrived in Devon a few days ahead of the family to celebrate the end of their school exams, and had managed to make waves during their short time there; they disrupted the folk music festival at the neighboring farm, with Lottie posting incendiary videos on social media mocking what she snobbishly considered to be a parochial community.

When further tragedy strikes, Venn and his team begin questioning a community filled with secrets. Hannah’s father, Paul Armstrong, is a rising political star, a fact that quickly draws intense media scrutiny to the case, not least because there are many who would want to take him down. With the summer heat come holidaymakers, and it emerges that some of them may have more connections with the Armstrong family than first thought.

Caught between a powerful family's secrets and a powder keg of local tensions, Venn and his team must navigate a treacherous path. He knows all too well that the real answers lie not in what people say, but in the silence that they keep

My Opinion: I’ve been hooked on this series since book one, and ‘The Dying Light’ reinforces why Ann Cleeves is one of those writers who can pull you straight into a story and keep you there, no matter how many characters, secrets, or tangled relationships she throws at you. Her writing has that quiet magnetism, with nothing flashy, just steady, confident storytelling that makes you forget you meant to stop after one chapter.

And honestly? You don’t have to start at the beginning of the series. Cleeves is good at giving you what you need as you go. But if you do start from book one, you’ll catch some dynamics that are nice to have for reference.

Early on, you’re pretty sure you know who’s responsible for the deaths of two young women. Cleeves practically hands you a suspect on a platter. But she’s sneaky. Oh, so sneaky, and she leads you down a path that feels so plausible you don’t question it. That is until you suddenly realize you were completely, and gloriously, wrong. That’s the magic of her plotting. She doesn’t yank the rug out from under you; she quietly rotates the view until you’re facing something you didn’t notice before.

This town is drowning in secrets. Too many people hiding too many things, and it’s up to Venn, Rafferty, May, and the rest of the team to sort through lies. Half the folks they interview seem to be protecting someone, or something, and you can’t help wondering what exactly this community is trying so hard to keep buried.

Meanwhile, Matt Venn is stuck in his own head about his relationship with his husband. There are hints of big changes coming, but it’s a gentle subplot that’s just enough to remind you these characters have lives outside the investigation, without ever pulling your attention too far from the central mystery.

Despite the crowd of characters and interwoven relationships, I found this a fast, absorbing read. I was happily wrong in all my early theories, and I loved the book all the way through to the final chapters. Cleeves delivers a twisty, satisfying mystery that rewards your attention and keeps you turning pages even when you think you’ve got it all figured out.

Vintage Spirits

Title: Vintage Spirits
Author: Annabel Chase
Published: January 13, 2026 by Storm Publishing
Format: Audio, 192 Pages
Genre: Paranormal
Series: Midlife Magic Cocktail Club #3

Blurb: Julie Duncan never expected to be a fifty-year-old widow living with her domineering mother in the same lakeside house she grew up in. Winters in Lake Cloverleaf are a gloomy time for Julie. Christmas and New Year’s Eve remind her of her late husband and she isn’t looking forward to yet another holiday season without him. The unexpected death of her mother only adds to Julie’s grief--until a magical cocktail recipe triggers psychic visions of ghosts.

The new year kicks off a new normal for Julie, except she has neither the time nor the energy for unwelcome spirits. She already has an unwelcome visitor in the land of the living—her estranged brother who’s arrived in town to take control of the estate. Brad hasn’t been in their lives for years, yet now he expects to displace Julie and sell the family home, knowing perfectly well that Julie is unlikely to put up a fight.

As Julie struggles to cope with these seismic changes, she encounters more spirits and slowly begins to accept her gift.

In learning to use her voice on behalf of the dead, Julie just might learn to use it for herself.

My Opinion: The third book in the *Midlife Magic Cocktail Club* series lands with a mix of humor, grief, and that familiar magical warmth, which for me, was a welcome return to this group of women. This novel opens with Julie Duncan, still numb from the death of her husband, then finding her deceased mother, and her reaction is… empty. Doris was a demanding and difficult woman, so Julie’s emotionless reaction makes sense, but it still felt a little off‑kilter. Maybe she was just frozen. Maybe she’d already done her grieving long before she opened the door.

Thankfully, Julie’s magical cocktail crew [Libby, Kate, Julie, and Rebecca] are right there with her. These women, all inheritors of Inga Paulsen’s enchanted recipes, have become such a steady presence in the series. I love the generational magic concept: witches aren’t born, they’re created, and each woman’s ability shows up exactly when she needs it. So of course, on the night of her mother’s memorial service, the notebook offers up a new cocktail recipe. And of course, Julie tries it. Easy‑peasy.

Then, my favorite part, we get a good old-fashioned “I see dead people” storyline. I’m a sucker for these. The “can you help me?” moments are sweet without being syrupy, and the emotional beats land in that gentle, magical way this series does well. You can see the final goodbye coming; you know why it’s coming, but it still sneaks up and taps you right in the feels.

I enjoyed this book so much more than *Bewitching Bitters*. It felt steadier, more heartfelt, and more connected to what made *Magic Uncorked* so charming. Only one more book to go, and honestly, I think I might miss these ladies when it’s over.

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches

Title: The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches
Author: Sangu Mandanna
Published: August 23, 2022 by Berkle
Format: Paperback, 336 Pages
Genre: Fantasy

Blurb: As one of the few witches in Britain, Mika Moon knows she has to hide her magic, keep her head down, and stay away from other witches so their powers don't mingle and draw attention. And as an orphan who lost her parents at a young age and was raised by strangers, she's used to being alone and she follows the rules...with one exception: an online account, where she posts videos pretending to be a witch. She thinks no one will take it seriously.

But someone does. An unexpected message arrives, begging her to travel to the remote and mysterious Nowhere House to teach three young witches how to control their magic. It breaks all of the rules, but Mika goes anyway, and is immediately tangled up in the lives and secrets of not only her three charges, but also an absent archaeologist, a retired actor, two long-suffering caretakers, and...Jamie. The handsome and prickly librarian of Nowhere House would do anything to protect the children, and as far as he's concerned, a stranger like Mika is a threat. An irritatingly appealing threat.

As Mika begins to find her place at Nowhere House, the thought of belonging somewhere begins to feel like a real possibility. But magic isn't the only danger in the world, and when a threat comes knocking at their door, Mika will need to decide whether to risk everything to protect a found family she didn't know she was looking for.

My Opinion: Some books land in your lap like they’ve been waiting for you to slow down long enough to notice them. This novel, which has been on my shelf for a while, was one of those for me. I was completely pulled in from the first pages, with the kind of immediate connection where you blink and realize you’ve already read three chapters.

This was my first time reading Sangu Mandanna, and now I’m already eyeing the companion novel because clearly, I’ve been missing out. This book became my entire weekend, even though I had a long list of fall outdoor prep waiting for me. Instead, I kept thinking: surely Mika’s magic could handle the weeds, maybe charm the rake into doing a few areas while I stayed curled up with the narrative. Alas, no such luck since the pages, with their well-timed humor, were worth the undone chores.

Yes, the grumpy sunshine romance is visible early on, but it’s never the whole point. As the story unfolds, each character, consisting of three young witches, their caretakers, and Mika herself, becomes someone you genuinely care about. As you read, you feel you’ve been invited into a home full of oddities, warmth, and secrets, and you have mentally moved in before you have been invited to stay.

This is a book about found family, found romance, found heartbreak, and found futures. It’s cozy without being too much, magical without losing its grounding, and heartfelt in a way that sneaks up on you. A perfect “right book, right time” read and one I’m glad found me.

Demon Copperhead

Title: Demon Copperhead
Author: Barbara Kingsolver
Published: October 18, 2022 by Harper
Format: Hardcover, 560 Pages
Genre: Historical Fiction

Blurb: Demon Copperhead is set in the mountains of southern Appalachia. It's the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, he braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities.

Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens' anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can't imagine leaving behind.

My Opinion: I’ll be honest: This award-winning novel hooked me right from the start. Those early chapters had that crackling energy where you think this is going to be something special. And it is… at least at first. But somewhere around the middle, the momentum sagged. I kept reading, hoping it would snap back into place, but the story just stayed stuck in that same loop of redundant disappointment and sadness.

I switched to the audiobook since that helps when I get bogged down, and I did enjoy it a bit more. But eventually even that drifted into background noise, which is never a great sign. How many words do you need to read about a child in the foster care system, who keeps getting knocked down, again and again, till all that is left is lost dreams and death, while trying to grab on to any tiny glimmers of hope? And while that’s an important story, I didn’t need 540 pages of the same heartbreak to understand the point.

That said, I absolutely see why it won the Pulitzer Prize. At its heart, it is a coming‑of‑age documentary wrapped in fiction. An unflinching look at rural Southern life in the 1980s, where being born into a bad situation often means you’re stuck there, and where drugs marketed as “help” ended up devastating entire communities.

And here’s the thing: by the end, she pulled me back in. The final stretch has real emotional weight of sadness, yes, but also humor, resilience, hope, and the kind of community that keeps people afloat even when everything else is falling apart. It’s a tough book, a long book, and sometimes a frustrating book, but it’s also undeniably powerful.

If you want a raw, wide-ranging story that faces tough topics head-on, this book deserves its reputation, even if it can be a test of patience.